


Like Glitter and Gold

by madnessandmystery



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Dursley Family (Harry Potter), Bowtruckle (Harry Potter), Gen, Harry Potter Gets a Hug, Harry Potter Gets the Love He Deserves, Harry Potter was Adopted by Other(s), Occamy (Harry Potter), Parselmouth Harry Potter, Parseltongue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29730414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madnessandmystery/pseuds/madnessandmystery
Summary: "Really," Harry thinks, "I never thought I would have a day so exciting that the least incredible thing about it was discovering I could talk to snakes."
Relationships: Harry Potter & Newt Scamander
Comments: 11
Kudos: 61





	Like Glitter and Gold

**Author's Note:**

> The bold at the beginning of this fic is a direct copy from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This was used to set the scene, as I jump right in after Harry first sees the boa constrictor. Of course, I am not JK Rowling and do not own either series of books or movies.
> 
> There are a few majorish changes from canon in this fic, the first of which being that Harry (and Dudley) are both 8 instead of turning 11. The second is that Newt Scamander is present and apparently young, though that will be explained in a future chapter. The final change is that the Dursleys are rather more awful than in canon, though of course in canon they were not great. Nothing will be graphic, though mentions of the abuse (and possible minimal swearing later) are what made me give this fic a T rating. Also, I have taken quite a few liberties on the abilities of the magical creatures featured in the fic, so some may have non-canonical talents.

**After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in here, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon’s car and crushed it into a dustbin – but at the moment it didn’t look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.**

**Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils.**

**“Make it move,” he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn’t budge.**

**“Do it again,” Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.**

**“This is boring,” Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.**

**Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself – no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up - at least he got to visit the rest of the house.**

**The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on level with Harry’s.**

**_It winked._ **

Harry’s looked at it for a moment, shocked, before giving the snake a quick wink back. He double checked that no one else was looking, and they weren’t. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had followed along after Dudley and Piers and now the group was most of the way through the exhibit, busy looking at the poisonous tree-frogs. The only other person that was even slightly close was a man around Aunt Petunia’s age, though their age was pretty much all they had in common. The man was taller than his aunt and though he was also slender, he wasn’t as thin as Aunt Petunia. He had rather messy copper hair and was covered in freckles. He was wearing a long blue jacket, a look that Harry rather liked, though he knew that Aunt Petunia hated (which may be part of the reason that Harry liked it so much). Curiously enough, Harry spotted a leaf sticking out of his breast pocket. And, topping the outfit off, was an old-fashioned leather suitcase.

_Can people sleep at the zoo?_ Harry wondered, giving a quick look around to see if any doors stood out as bedrooms. When none of them did, he snuck another glance at the man to see if he looking at Harry, but thankfully he wasn’t. Instead, he was intently studying an exhibit of boomslang snakes that Harry had already taken a look at.

Turning his attention back to the large snake, he wondered aloud, “What are you?” The snake raised its tail and pointed to a sign at the left side of the exhibit. Harry turned to look, missing the man whipping his head around to look at Harry.

The sign read, “Boa constrictor, Brazil. This specimen was bred in the zoo.”

“Oh, I see,” Harry said to the boa constrictor. “So you’ve never been to Brazil. I wonder if it’s nice there.”

Then, to Harry’s utter amazement, the snake spoke _back_. “It issss better than here, I am ssssure.”

Harry completely froze. Snakes don’t speak, everyone knows that. He opened his mouth and told it so.

The snake did a weird hissing noise that sounded didn’t sound like any words. Harry sagged in relief; he wasn’t going crazy! The thought quickly left his mind when the same voice spoke again, this time sounding much more amused. Harry wondered if that meant the hissing had been the snake’s version of a laugh. He listened as the snake said, “Not often, no. At least, not to humanssss. They don’t usually sssspeak back.”

At this point, Harry wasn’t rightly sure what to do. He knew that sometimes, freaky things happened around him, like his awful teacher’s wig turning blue and the time he appeared on the roof of his school when Dudley was chasing him. Though Harry had been brutally punished when those incidents occurred, Harry had always just thought of them as weird coincidences, no matter what the Dursleys had said. Now though, he began to wonder if they weren’t right to think him a freak.

He quickly looked down at his shoes and began to move away, deciding to think more on the strange conversation later in his cupboard. He had to work hard to ignore the snake commenting, “Just like that, ssssnakeling. Adiossss.” Unfortunately, he has focusing on ignoring the snake a bit _too_ much and his attention wasn’t on his surroundings as much as it should have been, as was proven when he walked right in to the chest of the man with the suitcase.

Harry quickly pulled his attention back and leapt back away from the man. Uncle Vernon never liked it when he was ignored and Aunt Petunia hated when he would touch her, so he knew that he should quickly apologize. He quickly looked the man in the eye and said, “Sorry sir, I didn’t mean to bump you, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“It’s alright lad,” the man spoke. He gently put down his suitcase. He seemed to be surprised, Harry thought, more than was typical for a similar situation. _Maybe he doesn’t know about apologizing if he lives at the zoo with animals_ , Harry figured. “Though usually when children aren’t watching where they’re going at a zoo it’s because they were too busy looking at the creatures, not at their shoes.”

“Well, um, you see,” Harry began, but wasn’t sure how to finish his excuse.

Thankfully, or not so thankfully, the man didn’t seem to need a response and continued, “Too busy talking to the snakes?”

Harry’s attention sharpened more than ever before. “You can talk to them too?” he asked in a loud whisper.

Somehow the man both relaxed and tensed up at the response. He took a deep breath and visibly relaxed further, the tenseness leaving his shoulders. The man looked around for a moment before quickly taking a stick out of his pocket and waving it around for a few seconds, then putting it back. Harry wondered what that had been about, but didn’t feel that he should ask. He turned his attention back to Harry and smiled. With a conspiratorially lowered voice he said, “Well, I do suppose anyone can talk _to_ the snakes. It’s getting them to talk back that is rather more of a challenge. Or, I suppose, being able to understand them when they do.”

“That’s rather what _he_ said,” muttered Harry, shrugging a shoulder and then nodding back towards the boa constrictor, then slapping his hand over his mouth when he realized what he’d admitted.

“Oh, is it now?” The man sounded thrilled, oddly enough. Harry peered up at him, but didn’t remove his hand. The man began to pat down the pockets of his blue coat, starting from the top and making his way down. Harry would have sworn he heard a squeak followed by angry chattering when the man brushed against the leaf sticking out of his breast pocket. It took almost a minute for the man to stop the weird patting dance ( _Maybe the man’s crazy and only_ thinks _he can sleep at the zoo_ , Harry idly thought as he watched the display) and pull out a small notebook and a _feather_ of all things from an inner pocket. Both were quite bent, having been kept in a pocket, but the man gave a quick flick of both wrists and both items immediately straightened out from their crumpled states.

Harry slowly took his hands away from his face and took a step closer so he could get a better look at the feather and notebook. He didn’t realize he was standing practically shoulder to hip with the taller man. The way that the items straightened out almost seemed like the slap bracelets Dudley had, though Harry didn’t know who would bother to do that to notebook pages or a feather. The feather didn’t seem big enough to be able to work the same, especially the soft parts on the edges, though they were indeed straight now. So intently was he staring at the feather that he didn’t even realize it was moving closer to him until it tickled him on the nose.

“Here, would you like to see?” The man gave another quick wiggle of the feather, making Harry giggle, and then held it out so Harry could take it.

“Are you sure, sir? Nobody usually trusts me with their stuff,” said Harry, though he really wanted to look at the feather. _Maybe it came from one of the birds from the zoo!_ Harry thought.

“Of course, lad. It’s just a quill, and I’m sure you can take care of it just fine. And, if something _does_ happen to it, it can be fixed right up or easily replaced.” He patted the area of his coat where he’d pulled the notebook and feather – _quill, not a feather, whatever the difference is,_ Harry reminded himself – and then blankly looked down at his notebook for a moment before pulling back the flap of his jacket and removing another quill, apparently realizing that he had given the first to Harry. “In fact, why don’t you keep it?” He began to use the quill to write in the notebook, though Harry didn’t know why he didn’t just use a pen. Or maybe the quill _was_ a pen? Harry didn’t want to be a snoop, but when he chanced a glance at what the man was writing he spotted the word “parseltongue” (whatever _that_ meant) and it looked to be written in ink similar to that from a pen.

“Oh no sir!” Harry exclaimed, though he secretly really wanted the beautiful quill. It was a dark brown color with lighter brown, almost golden, stripes. The tip was pointed and had clearly been sharped, looking almost like a pencil tip, but covered in that same ink that looked like ink from a pen. Somehow the ink looked wet, but it didn’t drip off and when Harry gingerly touched the end, none of the ink came off on his fingertip. “I’ve never been given any presents before, my Aunt says I’m not allowed ‘cause I’d ruin them.” The man stopped writing, though the tip of his quill stayed on the paper causing ink to spread out in a wide circle, coving up whatever he had just written.

“Oh?” said the man, a weird note to his voice.

Harry didn’t notice, too busy looking at the quill. “I don’t know why, really. I’ve seen Dudley ruin most of the presents he gets, but he still got 37 gifts for his birthday today. Well, 37 this morning. It was one less than last year, so Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon are going to buy him two new presents today to make up for it.”

“I see,” said the man tightly.

“Yeah,” Harry said, turning the quill this way and that. He bent the quill slightly and watched it bend, before letting it spring back to normal. He’d never gotten to play with Dudley’s slap bracelet before, but thought that he knew how it was supposed to work. He lightly hit the quill against his wrist, but nothing happened. Giving a small frown, Harry continued, “It must be true, though, because I don’t get any presents from Father Christmas either, even though I swear I’ve been good!”

“I’m sure you have been, lad,” the man replied. His quill was bent quite badly now in his hand, his knuckles white.

“At least Dudley’s old broken toys stay out of my cupboard,” Harry said. He glared at the quill, giving it a poke, then a shake, followed by another poke. _It doesn’t seem like metal or springs inside…_

“Your _cupboard_?” the man asked, voice strangled. Harry looked up, but the man was staring at the ink puddle that was now his notebook. Harry gave a mental shrug. _I wonder if he has more notebooks in his pocket with his extra quills._

“Yeah, where I sleep,” Harry idly answered, turning back to the Mystery of the Quill. He flipped the quill over and gently hit it against his wrist again, but still nothing happened beyond the quill bending a little. “Dudley has two bedrooms, his main one and his toy room. He likes to break his toys when he’s not chasing me around playing Harry Hunting. He can’t really fit through the cupboard door so he doesn’t go in it to bother me, which is pretty nice, especially when I get locked in for doing something freakish.” He slapped the quill on his wrist a bit harder, but still nothing happened.

“Something _freakish?”_ the man parroted. The anger in his voice, along with that word, finally made Harry realize what he had been saying. He started to shake. “And did you say ‘ _Harry_ Hunting?’”

Harry nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again. When Uncle Vernon started to talk about freakish things nothing good happened. The man before him was angry, just like Uncle Vernon, but he was a stranger and Harry didn’t know what to expect.

“Is your name Harry?” the man asked.

Harry, still shaking, nodded his head. The man’s eyes darted to his forehead and settled on his scar for a moment, seeming to be frozen. “Harry _Potter?_ ” he asked.

Harry froze, then began to shake harder as he once again nodded his head. _Does everyone know how freakish I am?_ he wondered.

The man took a breath in a way that Harry was very familiar with. His teachers would use it often when they were angry at him for something Dudley had done and blamed on Harry, but had to calm down to ‘deal with the problem.’ Somehow, the smile the man gave him after seemed genuine, though he still seemed a bit tense, and Harry began to calm down as well, still shaking a bit but no longer quite as afraid.

“It’s alright, Harry,” the man soothed, settling down on one knee before the boy. “My name is Newton Scamander, though please just call me Newt. Harry, what did you mean by ‘freakish?’”

Harry just shook his head. He couldn’t make himself look the man in the face anymore, and was instead looking at the leaf that was sticking out of the man’s top pocket.

“Harry, have things happened to you? Things you couldn’t explain? Maybe when you were sad, or angry, or scared?” Harry thought again of his teachers wig and appearing on the school and again nodded.

The man – Newt – looked around quickly but still no one was nearby. Harry didn’t think they had been talking for long, but still thought it was a little odd that no one else had come to see the large boa constrictor they were standing by yet.

“That’s called magic, Harry. It’s not being _freakish_ , it’s perfectly normal for a witch or wizard. You, lad, are a young wizard.”

“What!” Harry exclaimed. “I can’t be, I’m just Harry! I don’t know how to do any magic.”

“That’s alright lad, at your age no one does. When young witches and wizards turn eleven they get to go to a special school called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where they’ll learn all types of spells, potions, and all about the magical world, including magical creatures! Those are my specialty,” Newt said with a smile. For some reason he gave the leaf sticking out of his pocket a small stroke.

The reason for the weird action was explained when he stuck his finger down in the pocket and pulled out some kind of green stick that was almost shaped like a human. The creature had legs (three, Harry noticed, instead of the usual human amount of two), arms, and a head, though the proportions were a bit different from humans. The leaf that Harry had been staring at was in fact attached to the sticks head, almost like hair. Newt glanced quickly up at Harry’s scar again, looking almost concerned. He held out his finger, as well as its passenger, towards Harry and gently said, “Harry, I would like you to meet Pickett. He is one of my best friends, and is a magical creature called a bowtruckle. Why don’t you hold out your hand so he can say hello?”

Harry slowly held out his hand so his palm was facing upwards. Newt brought Pickett over and, with a small squeak, Pickett jumped on to Harry’s hand.

Pickett was so light that Harry almost wouldn’t be able to tell he was holding anything if it wasn’t for the fact that Pickett’s feet ( _can plants have feet?_ ) were tickling his palm. The creature was very small, only about as tall as Harry’s hand was long. Harry brought up his other hand and held it so his hands overlapped a little, offering something for Pickett to climb on. The small creature did, easily jumping the small distance.

“Bowtruckles are guardians of trees that are used to make wands. They won’t attack everyone that comes by their trees – after all, we wizards obviously make wands somehow! They have a unique ability to sense a person’s heart. Harry, by the way that Pickett is behaving with you right now, you clearly have a good heart.” Harry felt like he could glow. No one had ever said anything like that to him before, or really anything positive about him for that manner. He gave his finger a little wiggle in the direction of Pickett’s stomach in the same way that Newt had done with the quill shortly before. Pickett ran around the finger and again jumped arms before running up Harry’s arm, stopping at the edge of his shoulder.

Harry turned to look at the little guy, wondering what he was doing. The bowtruckle lifted up his hand and placed it directly on Harry’s scar, then turned to Newt and started to squeak and chatter in a manner that sounded angry somehow, though before that day Harry wouldn’t have been able to say what an angry squeak sounded like.

“Ah, I was afraid of that,” Newt said to himself, looking grave.

“I’m sorry, Newt sir, I don’t—I didn’t mean—did I hurt him?” Harry stuttered, wondering what had gone wrong. Was he evil after all?

“Oh Harry, you didn’t, it’s alright,” Newt said calmly, but still looked rather worried. “What do you know about your scar?”

“My Aunt Petunia told me I got it in the car accident that my parents died in,” Harry answered. He’d always thought that the scar was rather cool, but wondered what it had to do with anything.

“Ah, well, that’s not quite true I’m afraid,” said Newt. He took a breath, then got up from the ground. “Harry, why don’t I buy you an ice cream and I can tell you a little more about the magic world, and what your scar _really_ is?”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! Make sure to subscribe for future chapters. They should be posted shortly.
> 
> Speaking of, do you want to be part of the fic? Tell me which part of Barns Courtney's song "Glitter and Gold" you think fits best in Harry's life/ this fic and leave your name in a comment. I have a few very minor OCs that need naming.


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